In late 2019, an organism on the edge of life appears to have made the journey from the body of a bat into the bloodstream of a human, and shut down the global economy. Whatever else we may have learned from the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it has taught us that, before anything else, we are biological beings. Our lives and deaths are bound to the beings around us.
This lesson isn’t new. As capitalism has drilled into the boundaries of the life systems of our planet, we have had numerous reminders in recent years that we are not just individuals. All creatures on earth depend on each other.
As the novel coronavirus was starting to spread through Wuhan, Australia was under siege from bush fires. Thirsty marsupials found a new source of water: wombats used their burrowing skills to dig wells, which saved whole ecosystems of creatures.
